


His Own Prison

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Loki is insecure and wants to destroy everything, because secretly he just wants friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6407140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The greatest liar cannot lie to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Own Prison

He does not fear the walls of his cage. He does not fear the benevolent fury of his captors. He does not fear the might of their weapons, or the steel of their glares.

To every observant outsider, peering through the glass walls of his prison, marveling in the knowing, lazily defiant smile that lurks across his immortal features…it might almost appear that he is without fear.

Which is, of course, just as he wishes it.

Loki. The deceiver. The master of mischief. He who would rule Earth, who would watch freedom fall while he smiles at the folly of its philosophy.

There is nothing he fears.

Is there?

Behind the calm mystique of his deep eyes, he curses the weakness of the question. Curses it, crushes it, with every fiber of his godly being.

It is a lie.

And yet—the greatest liar cannot lie to himself. The one to whom deception is an art cannot be deceived. And so he watches the source of his only fear, his only weakness, active before his eyes—beyond the invisible glass barriers that hold him a captive in name only.

What does he watch?

He watches greetings, greetings between a man whom time left behind, ever the soldier, and the man who left time behind by refusing to grow up and who remains a proud, brilliant, wealthy child. He watches the quiet demeanor of the disarming doctor, who will be Loki's secret weapon. He watches the majestic clumsiness of his adoptive brother. He watches them all, and smiles in pretended scorn at the tentative workings of beginning relationships.

A handshake.

A nod.

A smile.

A jibe, and in response, a laugh—or perhaps an insulted glare, an irritated exclamation.

It matters not the outward appearance of the interaction; they are all of the same nature.

The nature of friendship.

Friendship. Affection. The roots of a sort of warm, brotherly love.

Something that, for all his incredible cleverness and guile, he will never find in the depths of his ice-cold heart.

Nor does he wish to. Or does he?

For one second—a single second—his resolve, his sardonic smile, his loathing of such weakness…all of these melt. For one second he envies them. For that second, he wants to be on the other side of the glass, plotting with these friends on how to defeat the monster that is—

Himself.

He realizes, in the revelation of this strangely profound second, that the true prison is not the bullet-proof, tempered glass.

The prison that he is in is of his own making.

_He_ is his prison.

The second passes, a flash of swiftly quenched light and warmth.

He settles back into his carefully malevolent smile—a smile whose charm grows tight at the corners. And he fixes his plan with newer, stronger resolve.

He must—he will—attack them, divide them, break them.

For what he cannot be a part of, he must tear apart.


End file.
